A Cure for What Ails You

     In the early 1970s I went through a back-to-nature phase. My girlfriend and I moved to upstate New York and lived with a friend who cultivated a huge garden. We helped him till and rake and weed and harvest; and we loved all the fresh produce from the garden. The ripe tomatoes off the vine. Corn eaten ten minutes after it was picked. But the greatest thing about the garden was that we were not responsible for it. He was. We just helped out a bit. If we had been in charge, the garden would have been nothing but a patch of weeds.

     It takes both talent and luck to grow a garden. Gardening is like gambling.

     When I bought my first home, I put in a vegetable garden. But I didn't have much luck -- although I think my problem was not so much bad luck as not enough work.

     In the early 2000s, after I got divorced, I lived in a condo, and there was a little patch of dirt out front that I turned into an herb garden. I grew basil, mint, parsley and a few other things. Plus, I had a tub on my deck with a tomato plant. I didn't rake in much, but at least the mint and parsley thrived, and a got a few tomatoes.

     Now I have the best set-up of all. My bother-in-law lives in Pennsylvania and he's a serious gardener who tills about an acre of corn in his front yard, and grows a variety of other vegetables on another half acre in his back yard. He and his wife have no children. They put up some of their produce, but they give a lot of it away. We visit them two or three times a summer, and come home laden with corn, tomatoes, beans, and lots of other stuff. Last year he even did sweet potatoes.

     I figure gardening is a lot like gambling. Some people are good at it; they can figure the odds, know how to play their cards. Others, like me, just don't know what they're doing, and our luck arrives when we know people who are flush, and who don't mind spreading it around.

     Blogger Meryl Baer has taken the gamble to retire to the Jersey Shore, right near Atlantic City. I've read that a couple of the big casinos have shut down. And now Baer has done a post on the city that, she says, is one of the most economically distressed urban areas in the country, a place where current events are a lot more interesting than any fictional story. If you're interested in some urban intrigue stake a claim over at her post A City Way Down on Its Luck.

     Of course, I know some people who have built their own house. And based on my own experience with contractors, I think building a house is even more of a gamble than growing a garden, or making a trip to Atlantic City. But not so Laura Lee Carter. She and her husband have been constructing a new solar home in the outback of Colorado, and her latest post More Progress Up at Our Build Last Week shows that they are making a lot of headway. All I can do is marvel at their courage, and appreciate vicariously the spectacular scenery at  their new house.

     There's another gamble we all take when we pick up our smart phones. This was a big issue a while ago, then seemed to fade, and so I thought it was just a scare. But apparently cellphones do emit at least a small amount of potentially hazardous radiation. On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, reports on her post Cellphone Cases Make Phones Work Harder that many cases are so badly designed that they partially block the antenna, making the phone work harder to transmit a signal and intensifying the radiation that strikes the user’s head and body. Rita’s article also offers tips on reducing your cellphone radiation exposure.

     I know my phone case partially blocks the camera lens, so I have to make sure to move it out of the way when I take a picture. It's kind of annoying. But I didn't know the case actually posed a health danger. Personally, the way I deal with the problem is that I don't use my smart phone much. But for those who do, perhaps you should check out Robison's post.

     And finally, back to gardening. In her post Is Gardening a Simple Cure for What Ails You? blogger Kathy Gottberg of SmartLiving365, remembers her mom working in her garden. It was little more than a rock-and-gravel patch of dirt, yet she managed to harvest a few tomatoes and zucchini in spite of the inhospitable ground.

     "While I always enjoyed the taste of her fresh vegetables," recalls Gottberg, "my life was far too important and fast-paced to even imagine having the time or interest to garden. But now here I am so many years later, spending time nearly every day nurturing tiny green plants in my care. Though it's taken a while, I've  gradually come to realize that many of the hidden benefits my mother harvested went far beyond the obvious. I have come to realize that gardening may just be a cure for what ails many people, as well as the planet itself."

     After reading Gottberg's elegant words, I wonder if all of us might be better off we if just folded our cards, put down our smart phones, and picked up a hoe or a rake instead.